This is for every teacher who refuses to be blamed for the failure of our society to erase poverty and inequality, and refuses to accept assessments, tests and evaluations imposed by those who have contempt for real teaching and learning.

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Thursday, April 7, 2016

CALL TO ACTION! MEDIA BLITZ WARRIORS NEEDED!

Fellow BATS, we would like to get an opt-out media blitz going. This is a good way to get information to parents on why they should refuse the high-stakes tests, in a hurry, and for no money. All it requires on your part is some time.Every media outlet today has a web presence. What we are going to do is very simple. For every testing news story that is placed on the web, especially on a Facebook page or where they allow comments, we are going to place in the comments our own post of either of the following videos:m.youtube.com/watch?v=2ayYajsQjg8 – a wonderfully diverse group of parents talking about the harm that tests are doing to their children…

If you would like to do this, you can use this state by state web guide that gives the facebook, twitter, and website information on newspapers: http://www.usnpl.com/nynews.php

Directions:1. Highlight and copy the link to the video you will post.2. Open the http://www.usnpl.com/nynews.php site and begin with newspapers in your area. Click on the FB page for the newspaper(s). When you get to the page, in the “search this page” box type in a short search phrase like “opt-out tests” or “state tests”. Look for a story on the subject of testing and scroll to the comments/posts underneath. Post your video link there with a short comment, like “Go to NYSAPE for opt-out letters”. There are many sites that you can refer people to for the opt-out letter, so choose whatever one you would like.3. I find that the fastest way for me to do this, is to always use the same video. Post one comment/video link (maybe on your personal FB page for example), and then copy the entire post including the link so that you can quickly paste it into the news stories.4. You can also check out the twitter feed of the paper – if they have put a link out to the story you can tweet a reply to it with the link to the video.5. On the newspaper or news channel website, you may or may not be able to post the video in a comment on the story but it’s worth a try.That’s it! You can do as many newspapers as you wish, and you can extend this to the posts of local tv channel news stories as well. If you see that someone else has already posted one of the videos we’ve chosen, you can either reply to it if you wish, post the other video, or move on to another newspaper. In New York, we have only one week before the next wave of testing. Let’s try to get the information out there on why we need to continue our resistance.